Monday, August 29, 2016

The Taytay Drainage Systematic Observation and Scientific Analysis of the Projected Hydrological Functionality and Gravitational Flow of the on-going Upgrade of the Municipality's Flood Control System in lieu of the Excessive Athmospheric Monsoon Precipitations as a direct effect of Climate Change

The old Taytay Bridge. It was raised by about four meters.

The first floor of the former Gacula Clinic is now completely covered by the arc of newly rehabilitated bridge.

(The kilometric gibberish, pseudo-academic sounding title conveys the state of mind of the blogger and it also provides the gist of the post.Hope it did not stump you. But if it did, do try do read on...)

The traffic in Taytay is terrible. As usual, the culprit is the government's public work projects that began with the rehabilitation of Taytay Bridge. I thought that was it but when the project was done, I was surprised to see tracked vehicles armed with jackhammers ripping apart the main road in downtown Taytay.

Of course, like me, many of the ordinary Taytayenos are aghast at the idea of breaking up and digging what is a relatively good road. A lot of FB posts are ranting mad about the seemingly in flagrante derelicto's waste of the citizen's tax money. But nothing can be done about it, mere mortals are not privy to the council of government.

Jack-hammered and ready for destruction!

It's a good thing Taytay has a lot of secondary and tertiary streets where vehicles can find alternate ways but these streets are small and with the volume of traffic that passes through downtown Taytay, it's a nightmare.

The mystery is revealed when tarpaulins sprouted informing the towns people that the Department of Public Works is rehabilitating and raising the road by a meter and upgrading/enlarging the drainage system.Anyway...'ll start with a caveat: I am not saying I am more intelligent than the Public Works engineers nor do I think that these engineers do not know their stuffs, I believe otherwise. But just the same, I am inclined to give these engineers the following observation, and questions.1. An improved drainage is useless unless it is connected to a working municipal drainage system and the neighboring towns to ensure that floodwater will drain to Laguna Lake and then ultimately in to the sea.In a nut shell, you don't improve a drainage only to connect it to a bottle neck and route it to a dead end.2. What I fear here is that the improved drainage covers only a few kilometers and when that few kilometers is done, the improved drainage will be connected to an old, unimproved drainage system, voila, the bottle neck. Of course, the connecting old drainage system will be improved in the next years or decade and by that time the improved drainage in Taytay is silted and clogged that it needs to be re-piped, again.3. Elevation. Downtown Taytay is flood prone because of its low elevation. It's the catch basin of rain waters coming down from the surrounding hills of the municipality as well rainwater cascading from the mountains of neighboring Antipolo City. Even if the improved drainage is raised by a meter, will it be enough to allow the water to flow downward to the Manggahan Floodway? What if the meter raised is not enough to elevate it higher than the connecting drain pipes en route to the flood way.

To illustrate, look at the aerial picture in the right. This is the Ortigas-Cainta junction traffic bottle neck. Ortigas Avenue was improved, it was widened to a six lane road but it was connected to a two lane road.Flood water, unlike vehicles, do not have drivers and they do not obey traffic laws and ordinances, not that I'm saying my countrymen always do. Floodwater follows only one law: the law of gravity.Logically, the floodwater will flow back to the secondary and tertiary road/street drains thus aggravating the town's flood problem. Instead of draining, the improved drainage could end up acting more like a reservoir that once full will back flow flood water into the tributary drains submerging the entire downtown in the process except the newly elevated bridge and road. Now, that is something out of a joke book.